The apartment only had one bedroom, and it wasn’t hard to follow her there in the dark. She climbed into bed with her clothes on. Just sleeping for the rest of the night, I thought. I got into bed on the other side, overwhelmed by how good it smelled, and gathered her to me. Our lips shyly sought each other out, delicately aware of what was smouldering between us. She gently pushed me back again, and I drifted off eventually, waking later while it was still dark. A contentment settled on me when I realized where I was and who was in my arms. I bent my neck to kiss her head, but she stirred and turned to catch my lips. The way she arched her back against me and twisted her neck was unbearably erotic.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you up,” I muttered, kissing her hair chastely. I squeezed her a little closer to me, though I wanted to do much, much more. Simultaneously mortified and proud of the hardened state I was maintaining seemingly all night. 

This happened at least one more time before morning—we’d wake from shallow sleep to kiss slowly and sleepily. Morning broke on my utter happiness, promising to be a sunny, warm day. I watched Gabbie reluctantly wake up and punch the alarm off on her phone. She snaked her closest arm under me and circled it under my head to lace her fingers in my hair. I closed my eyes again and leaned into her.

“Sorry if I stink,” I muttered. I felt kind of disgusted that I hadn’t bathed last night and slept in my clothes.

“You don’t stink, trust me. I wouldn’t be this close to you if you did.” She rubbed my scalp one last time before hoisting herself out of bed.

I groaned. 

“Won't you walk with me to work?” she prompted.

“I’d be upset if you didn’t let me.”

We each took a turn washing up in the bathroom. I had no choice but to wear the same clothes from the day before. The walk of shame, they’d called it in Toronto. We have various similar phrases in Japanese, and I hoped Victor wouldn't notice when I showed up rumpled and swollen-lipped and give me a hard time. 

As we left her apartment, Gabbie grasped my hand tightly before we descended the exterior stairs, interweaving our fingers. I hardly felt the concrete beneath my feet, my head filling with plans. Gabbie and I would have a romantic summer, falling in love and working together. In a few years, we’d get married and have kids and she’d be the best teacher and mother ever. 

“Do you want to go to the ocean with me this summer?” I asked.

She squinted slightly in the morning sun. “I would love that. I’ve never swum in the ocean.”

Just as her foot touched down from the last stair to the asphalt, I felt it. A deep rumbling below our feet.

“Oh no,” Gabbie said, feeling it too. 

The rumbling increased and a siren sounded in the distance. The warning for a large quake. Both our phones began blaring the emergency warning with a recording of a polite woman’s voice calmly stating “There is an earthquake” repeatedly in Japanese. We still held hands so I drew Gabbie closer to me. I pulled her under the stair overhang with me.

“God,” she begged, her voice climbing louder than the sound of grating brick and concrete. 

I pulled her close to me, wrapping my arm around her back, my hand around her head, willing the shaking to stop. Instead, it ratcheted up again, the blue building wall vibrating until it appeared to ripple like a wave rolling across the ocean. I squeezed my eyes shut, then forced myself to open them. Had to be vigilant and protect Gabbie. 

The building across the street was rippling like liquid too, clay tiles cascaded from its roof and smashed on the ground. She jumped at each crash. Car alarms were going off.

Finally, it came to a stop. The siren was silenced. Other than the car alarms, the only sound was the trickling of dust coming from the overhang. A few people tripped out of nearby houses to survey the damage. 

I peeled Gabbie slowly off ‌my chest to look her over. She was stiff. All colour had drained from her face. 

“We’re okay,” I murmured, still holding her by the shoulders, worrying she might faint if I let go. She didn’t respond. I began to steer her back toward the stairs. “Let's go back to your place. You should call in sick today.” 

“No,” she croaked faintly. “What if there are more aftershocks?”

I halted. That likely would happen. Large quakes were usually followed by hundreds of diminishing, smaller quakes, most of which we wouldn’t even feel. But some would still be big enough to shake buildings and it wouldn’t be a good day. I remembered her words from the night before: I don’t want to be alone. So I sat on the second-to-last stair and pulled her hand to join me.

“Let's rest here for a few minutes then.”

She slowly bent at the waist, as if rusted to the spot. Once she was finally next to me, I swung my arm around her and pulled her to my side, using my other hand to grasp hers. We sat like that for a moment until something crashed to the ground a short distance away, likely another piece of someone’s roof, making Gabbie jump. I didn’t take too much notice of the whirring of a bicycle approaching us at first until it stopped.

“Huh,” a low voice muttered. 

Both our heads snapped up. 

“Yuya,” Gabbie said. “What are you doing here?”

“I see why you weren’t replying to my messages.” His eyes ran over my arm, still around Gabbie. “I came to make sure you’re all right.”

The realization that Yuya knew where Gabbie lived made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “We’re fine here.”

Yuya swung off his bike, letting it drop to the ground. “I wasn’t asking about you.”

I jumped up from my seat, causing a whimper from Gabbie as I ripped my hold from her. 

“You led me on,” Yuya grated out, gesturing at her. 

“You haven’t even been coming to class lately,” she retorted.

“I didn’t even want to go to your stupid class, I just wanted to ask you out.” 

I stepped closer to him. “Don’t talk to her like that. This shit is so basic and stupid. We’re adults now. I’m leaving you alone so drop it.”

Yuya stared at me, his face turned into a sneer. “Oh yeah,” he said in English. “Did Tobio tell you we know each other? Since we were kids.”

“Don’t.” My voice was hardly above a whisper. 

“What?” Gabbie demanded.

“I was going to tell you, but you didn’t give me the chance,” Yuya said.

“Stop,” I pleaded. My blood was turning into antifreeze.

“This guy did everything he could to ruin my life growing up. And he’s still doing it now. The only reason he asked you out was because he knew I got your number first.”

“That isn’t true.” My voice rose to a growl. “That was you.” 

I couldn’t bring myself to look at Gabbie, but I could feel her gaze swivelling between the two of us.

“What the hell is going on?”

“I’m really sorry,” I began. “I should have told you right away. But I wanted you to like me.” 

Gabbie’s face had turned into a scowl and Yuya scoffed.

“Who would like you if they knew the truth about you, idiot?” he said. 

“It's true, I was cruel to Yuya in grade school when we fought over a girl,” I admitted.

“There was more than one, at least one every year. Don’t act like you forgot,” Yuya cut in.

“Why would you hide this from me? Both of you did. You can’t tell the truth, even now?” Gabbie’s face looked about to crack. She didn’t have to say the rest she was thinking; I could see it plainly. She couldn’t believe we’d just spent the night together and now her trust in me was completely broken. I wasn’t the same person in her eyes that I was a few moments ago. 

The earth began to rumble once again, I nearly lost my footing. In my periphery, Yuya shuffled to take shelter under the overhang of the next building. I moved to protect Gabbie like I’d done before but she screamed, “Don’t!”

The aftershock was small and didn't last long. As soon as it was over, Yuya threw us one last look, went for his bike and took off, likely to seek shelter somewhere indoors.

I turned toward Gabbie, but she was stumbling up the steps to her apartment, a sob trailing after her. 

A few seconds passed, dithering there alone, until I decided to rush up the stairs. I knocked on her door politely, tried the locked handle to no avail.

“Gabbie,” I tried to project through the door loudly enough that she would hear me but not disturb any neighbours who might still be home. “Can we talk? Please.”

She didn’t answer me or unlock the door. I tried knocking a couple more times, then texting and calling her. According to the time on my phone, I should be at work right about now. 

“I’m gonna go,” I called through the door, “but I want to talk whenever you’re ready.”

I didn’t hurry down the road toward Motto English School, hoping Gabbie might catch up to me. And fantasizing that I might come across Yuya along the way and take the opportunity to knock him off his bike. But neither showed, and I could use the quake as my excuse to be late. The front door of the school was unlocked, and I found Victor and Sandy upstairs in his office. 

“Business as usual today?” I asked as I strode in, pretending to be much more confident and relaxed than I actually felt. 

Victor held up his phone then put it down with a little too much force. “Gabs just sent me her resignation.”

“What?” I stopped dead. The antifreeze was back. “Did she say why?”

“The quake scared her.” Victor leaned back in his chair and looked at Sandy. “It’s so damn hard to hold on to some of these expats. They can’t cut it here or they get too homesick. I don’t know if we should take another chance."

The rest of their conversation blurred in my ears. This was all my fault, but it sounded like Gabbie hadn’t revealed that to Victor. I left the office without a word, closed myself in a classroom, and stared at my phone for a long while. Another mini quake rattled the building then died off. A few adult students wandered in to see if lessons were on. None of the grade school-aged students were likely to show today, as I saw on the news in my phone that they had the day off again from public school. I was trying to work on lesson plans but it was hard to concentrate. My empty stomach gnawed at me but I couldn’t bring myself to get up and find lunch. I deserved to go hungry today. 

“Victor already told you, I guess.” Her voice came from the doorway. 

My head snapped up. Gabbie stood at the open door, her eyes rimmed in red.

“Did he convince you to come in?” My voice betrayed my shock at her appearance.

She nodded once. “I’m going home in two weeks. I already booked the flight, so you can’t try to change my mind.”

“Will you please let me explain?” 

“I talked to Yuya a bit more before I came to work,” she said, and my mouth gaped open. “I don’t think I need to hear anymore.”

“That isn’t fair.” I sounded like a child. 

“Yeah,” she muttered sardonically, scratched her nose and sniffled. “I don’t really want to talk to you but—guess I’ll see ya around.”

I was too stunned to chase after her. A while later, I went to her classroom, but she had locked the door. I didn’t want to draw attention to the situation, so I refrained from knocking. 

She was cold to me for the next two weeks. If we ran into each other in front of our coworkers, we were both scarily good at acting like everything was fine. My many texts and calls to her after work continued to go unanswered. My parents could tell something was wrong, but I couldn’t reveal the truth to them. I had never told them much about my troubles with Yuya, so instead I claimed I was a little stressed since the earthquake. That was at least partially true. 

On Gabbie’s last day at work, my stomach and chest were tight. I had hardly slept the night before. I needed to make her see how sorry I really was before she left for the US. I didn’t want this to be the last time I ever saw her, it couldn’t be. But work was especially busy and I didn’t get a chance to find her. At the end of the evening, I speed-walked to Victor's office to see if she was there.

“Do you know where Gabbie is?” I asked.

“She didn’t say goodbye to you? She left early to catch her flight.” Victor gave me a concerned look. 

I sprinted to the stairs, not caring how that made me look to him or anyone else, and ran in my indoor shoes to Gabbie’s building. I nearly skinned my knees launching myself up the concrete stairs to her apartment. 

I pounded on her door. “Gabbie, please! Gabbie!”

A neighbouring apartment door clicked open. A middle-aged person poked their head out. “That girl moved out today, I don’t think she’s home.” 

“I see, thank you,” I answered, struggling to catch my breath. 

I waited there for a moment, hoping it wasn’t true and Gabbie would appear. The neighbour shut their door again and locked it firmly, clearly annoyed by the ruckus. No noise came from Gabbie’s apartment. Her door remained lifeless. I thought about hurrying to the airport to try and catch her like a horrible romance movie, but she hadn’t even told me if she was flying out of Osaka or Tokyo. I pictured her standing at the gate in my favourite outfit, her back to me. 

She hadn’t even said goodbye.